1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of providing a healthcare support service for making home care possible, a communication unit, and system and apparatus for providing healthcare support.
2. Description of the Related Art
The nucleus of the disease structure of advanced countries has shifted from acute diseases such as infection to chronic diseases called life-style related diseases with an improvement in living level. Typical chronic diseases include diabetes. An increase in such chronic diseases requires home care for supporting long-term therapy to combine social life and therapy.
As part of the measures, it is desired to be able to monitor patient's vital data and automatically inform medical institutions etc. of it in response to the aggravation in disease or to be able to consult doctors etc. online when patients feel uneasy about their health. For this purpose, for example, a system disclosed in JP-A-2002-291879 is proposed.
In environment in which the foregoing system is used, however, patients can easily access medical institutions without going out. Accordingly, the number of accesses to medical institutions will increase, producing the possibility of applying excess loads onto doctors who answer the accesses.